Agarwood's Tale of the White

Childhood friends: a traditional Chinese medicine doctor × an energetic illustrator

[Childhood friends + reunion after years apart + devoted to each other + happy ending + gentle and healing]

A tender vigil spanning twenty years

[Synopsis]

On the day Su Lingyi returned to Beijing, a pot of Hangzhou white chrysanthemums had appeared in front of the Xinglin Chun Medicine Hall.

Beneath the flowerpot was a note: “Autumn dryness harms the lungs. Chrysanthemums brighten the eyes.”

The handwriting was as elegant and upright as pine, exactly as it had been twenty years ago.

She pushed open the clinic door. Cheng Yanqing was writing a prescription.

His white coat sleeves were rolled up, and the agarwood beads around his wrist had a warm sheen. He looked up, briefly startled. “Lingyi?”

It was as if the ten years they’d been apart had passed in the blink of an eye.

He was the heir to a family of traditional Chinese medicine practitioners, disciplined and courteous, gentle as jade. His patients called him “Bodhisattva Cheng,” but they didn’t know that in the bottom drawer of his study he kept her childhood copy of Compendium of Materia Medica, covered in her doodles.

She was a rising illustrator, lively and creative, with a gift for bringing her drawings to life. Her fans loved her soothing style, but they didn’t know that in a corner of every one of her works, she hid an ingredient from Chinese medicine: the scent of agarwood that lingered on him in her memories.

“Cheng Yanqing, one of the green plums from the third shelf of your medicine cabinet is missing.”

“Mm. Some greedy little cat climbed in through the window last night and stole it.”

“...I was looking for inspiration!”

When traditional Chinese medicine meets modern illustration, and a restrained, well-mannered man meets a lively, vibrant woman

The bond that began when they were childhood friends in the old Beijing hutongs would, through Beijing’s changing seasons, ripen into the gentlest lifelong love.

[Spring warmth in the medicine hall, fragrance in the art studio. It turns out the most moving love is spending every year by your side.]